Message from Joseph Comprix, Outgoing Accounting Department Chair

Dear alumni and friends, 

I have a lot of news to share with you. First, we have made some important personnel changes in the department. I am going to work in the dean’s office as associate dean for faculty affairs and am stepping down as department chair. I will be working with Willie Reddic, who will be associate dean for business education. In addition, we have hired a new professor, Anywhere Sikochi, from Harvard University. He will start in the spring of 2025. He is an excellent teacher and has published in top journals such as the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Management Science, The Accounting Review and the Review of Accounting Studies. He is a welcome addition to the group. Finally, Craig Nichols will take over as department chair. Craig has been a member of the Whitman faculty since 2011 and I am confident he will do a terrific job. He has a strong record of accomplishment both as an instructor and as a researcher (with publications in the Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Contemporary Accounting Research and the Review of Accounting Studies).  

In other news, the department successfully completed making changes to the undergraduate accounting curriculum that we believe will meet the needs of our students and help prepare them for the new CPA education requirements in New York State. Specifically, for undergraduates in our accounting major, we dropped the required Advanced Financial Accounting course, added Accounting Information Systems (ACC 425) and Information Technology for Business (MIS 325) as requirements, and dropped the Law of Commercial Transactions course requirement. In addition, we changed the general accounting major requirements to allow students to pick two courses from auditing, tax, accounting information systems, information technology for business, accounting analytics, or financial statement analysis to make the major more flexible for students who would like to double major. These changes will be effective for undergraduate students matriculating in the fall 2024 semester.   

We are currently awaiting approval from New York State for revisions to our master’s degree program that resulted from the above changes to the undergraduate accounting major, as well as its re-registration as our licensure qualifying program for New York. Our anticipated changes include removing International Accounting as a required class, adding Advanced Financial Accounting as a required class, dropping the management selective requirement, and adding a second required accounting elective.   

I have some good news to share on enrollments in our undergraduate majors, which seem to be bouncing back from previous years. Across our two majors, enrollments went from 152 in the spring of last year to 197 in the spring of this year. Some of the growth comes from the large class of rising juniors at Whitman but some also comes from an increase in our market share relative to other majors at Whitman. For the fall of 2025, both ACC 356 and ACC 363 have full classes (these are junior-level classes), so the demand for our majors seems to be moving in the right direction. 

I would like to thank a few people for all their hard work this year. First, I would like to thank Joyce Zadzilka for all her help on the newsletter (and her work on the curriculum changes). I would not have been able to juggle the chair job and my other duties without her help. Beta Alpha Psi (BAP) has greatly increased its membership post-Covid, and I would like to thank Ginger Wagner (the advisor) and Michael Pellizzari (the president) for all the work they put in last year. BAP’s recruiting was strong and the total headcount for the 2023-24 academic year was up to 115. In the fall of 2023, BAP added 25 successful candidates, and they added another 45 in spring of this year. In addition, the group continued its tradition of community service with 13 BAP members participating in the VITA program and preparing 107 federal tax returns. We continued our Accounting Career Exploration program to New York City in May for the second year, and it was a big success again. Thanks to MaryAnn Monforte, Jen Kreischer and the Whitman Career Center for providing our students with this great opportunity to learn about careers in accounting. Finally, I would like to thank Kofi Appiah Okyere, who took six students to the National Association of Black Accountants (NABA) conference.  

Lastly, we had three accounting students who were named Whitman Scholars this year (we always seem to be overrepresented in this group): Alivia Catania, Paula Ostrowska and Lily Buckley. Congratulations to all three of them. 

Best wishes, 

Joseph Comprix